Federal Prosecutions: The Numbers

The Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics released a report looking at the decade 1994-2003 this week. Numbers are up: federal prosecutors investigated 130,000 suspects in 2003, up from 99,000 in 1994. Immigration offenses were part of the growing caseload, with 14% more immigration arrests and 25% more prison sentences for immigration convictions. The most common offenses in federal district courts were drug offenses. Bureau of Justice Statistics Press Release: Federal Criminal Justice Trends, 2003.

Meanwhile, for the current year, David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, report on beSpacific:

Very timely criminal enforcement data from the Justice Department document that federal criminal prosecutions in May were up from the previous month in all of the following categories: white collar crime (up 8.5%), immigration (up 15.3%), illegal drugs (up 8.9%) and weapons (up 9.7%). However, only immigration is up from a year ago (up 4.8% from May 2005); the other enforcement areas all show declines in prosecutions from the previous year.

Detailed reports are here.

Thanks: beSpacific.

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